Notes Jan 24, 2008

Giuliani has grown in this campaign. He is more restrained than he used to be. But I would never vote for him because of Sept. 26, 2001.

On that day, two weeks after 9/11, Giuliani, who could not run for re-election because of term limits, began a private campaign of intimidation and egomania to continue as mayor after his second term ended on Dec. 31, 2001. His popularity was at a peak. He called in the candidates already running to succeed him and told them he now had the power to persuade the governor and the state legislature to change the laws to allow him to run for a new term or to stay on for several months as the “emergency” mayor. And, he added, if those candidates, including Michael Bloomberg, now Mayor Bloomberg, did not agree to back him, he would run against them as the candidate of the Conservative Party.

This is what he said on Sept. 26, first in private, then in public:

“It’s my obligation to try to maintain the unity that exists in the city. … I mean I’ve invested seven and three-quarter years into trying to make it the best city in the world. And then it got devastated by this horrible attack. … It’s going to need politicians who think outside the box, who think outside the old way in which we used to practice politics. So that all came to me last night that I should start thinking that way also.”

“The box” Giuliani was trying to get out of was the law. And tradition. George Washington, who was a hell of a lot more important to national unity than Rudy Giuliani, went home after two terms, saying he had no desire to be a king or president-for-life. I, for one, can never forget (or forgive) what Giuliani tried to do that day. His astounding coup attempt failed in 2001, but I don’t think he can be trusted not to try the same thing again.

Mr. Gates isn’t abandoning his belief in capitalism as the best economic system. But in an interview with the Journal last week at his Microsoft office in Redmond, Wash., Mr. Gates said that he has grown impatient with the shortcomings of capitalism. He said he has seen those failings first-hand on trips for Microsoft to places like the South African slum of Soweto, and discussed them with dozens of experts on disease and poverty. He has voraciously read about those failings in books that propose new approaches to narrowing the gap between rich and poor.